Wednesday, 6 November 2013

Taeko may be injured, but that aside all is well within the temporary safety of The Planet as this week's Coppelion begins.

However, "temporary" is the operative word here, and it's no time at all before the 1st Division come knocking on their front door. This might not be such a big deal normally were it not for Aoi answering the front door and being summarily taken hostage - after announcing their desire for the other Coppelion to join their ranks, they head back to base complete with their new prisoner in tow.

Things don't go much better when it comes to Naruse's attempt to rescue Aoi either, as she quickly finds herself the subject of a brutal beating after hesitating when given an opportunity to shoot the division's leader. Luckily for her, another Coppelion has newly arrived on the scene - so-called Cleaner and former classmate Haruto. Without the same sense of responsibility towards human life, Haruto manages to rescue Naruse, and even has the gall to leave Aoi behind with a tracking device so that they can follow the 1st Division's movements. When the group finally heads for a new base (and another zone where radiation levels are rising alarmingly), another opportunity to rescue her friend presents itself to Naruse, although once again her naivety ultimately gets the better of her, with potentially deadly consequences this time...

Although I found a fair few things to like within its earlier episodes, I'm really beginning to lose patience with Coppelion - it might just be that we're at the cusp of some big revelations that will shift the emphasis of the series, but right now the show's narrative feels stuck in a rut. Aside from the sheer frustration of seeing Aoi turned into a worthless stooge for the show's out of place, comedy, everything else going on within the series feels strangely aimless and lacking in focus - sure, all of the events add up, slot together and make sense, but they rarely feel like they're informing any kind of more interesting wider story, while any socio-political questions asked by the series are relegated to talking points that are frittered away in a line or two of dialogue. There's certainly still plenty of room for this series to do interesting things, but I'm beginning to worry that Coppelion is turning into the same kind of wasteland that it uses as the basis for its story.